The Struggle with Legalism

Legalism - Webster defines it as strict adherence to the law, especially to the letter rather than the spirit. Our group would probably define it a bit differently: its more of a stumbling block, a challenge for us to overcome when sharing the love of Jesus to the people in Nicaragua. It always seems to rear it's ugly head when we are working with local churches or pastors. The times Philip has taught classes to the pastors of any area in Nicaragua, the overcoming of legalism is always a priority. For example, the last time Philip was teaching here a pastor commented that women should not be allowed into church wearing pants. He quoted a verse that states that women should not dress like men. Philip did an excellent job pulling all sorts of other verses in the same book that were being ignored by this same group of pastors: wearing clothes with blended cloth, planting fields with more than a single type of seed. Why were they ignoring these verses and focusing only on the one about women's attire?

We have the same issue attacking us here. In one of the other posts in this blog you learned of Pastor, a young man who's band is the warm-up act. He also sang a couple of songs with us on Thursday night. Well, last night the elders from his church told him that he should not sing with our band because we played secular music, which means that we are not Christians. They also pulled the drama team that performed on Thursday for the same reason. Their comment was that if we were a Christian group we would play only Christian music.

Anyway, the Festival goes on. We still had great night with over 1500 in the crowd and many making decisions for Christ. Mark had the sound great on stage and we had a good set. The bike guys did an excellent job as always, except Joey had a spill at the end of the night. Doing a flip, he made it all the way around but lost contact with his bike and came down on his elbow. Nothing broke but a bit of skin is now missing.

More later on our visits to the chocolate farm and the coffee production facility...